MSI all set to foray into retail market

MUMBAI

SEPTEMBER 9, 2006

Motherboard and graphic cards company MSI (Micro star international) is all
set to make its presence felt in retailing arena with the appointment of retail
partners for selling its notebooks. The first shipment of MSI notebooks will
reach to Indian sub-continent in the later part of this month to Tirupat
Enterprises, MSI's one of the distributor partners in Kolkata. However, the
company has not divulged much information about the numbers (notebooks) they are
looking to push into the market in the first sales quarter itself.

Diversifying its focus from being a core motherboard and graphic cards
company MSI during the last couple of years has expanded its product portfolio
by including various consumer electronics as well as information technology
products to its fold. Even though MSI has started its India chapter five years
back the company has initiated its first India office this year only in February
at Okhla, New Delhi; prior to which MSI was driving its products in India
through four distributor partners namely Tirupati enterprises, Priya, Esys and
Maxtone. While former two distributors of MSI dealt with AMD based products Esys
and Maxtone are involved in selling Intel based products only.

"We are trying to emulate the same philosophy that our head office
(Taiwan) has adopted during the last five years of ramifying business in various
product categories. Moving away from motherboards vendor tag now we will be
marketing our entire product line in India ranging from consumer electronics,
notebooks, graphic cards, barebones and others. Since we have tough competition
from established MNC notebook brands we will try to drive our product line in
the market innovatively with a very selected approach. Our first lot of
notebooks will reach India market by the end of this month," said Frank
Sherap, Country Manager, MSI.

Sherap informed that the company is presently on the look out for retail
partners in metros and semi metro cities. Sherap elaborated, "To begin with
we will rope in retail partners for our notebook series only in select cities
that will perhaps help us to get a feel of the market scenarios. We will appoint
partners based on their genuine interest in the product so that they could do
justice to a comparatively new brand on the block." Sherap reflected that
MSI would bank upon its reasonable pricing factor and support mechanism to
compete with the well-known laptop brands in India. The company has already made
amendments in its servicing policies by partnering with Digicomp as its third
party after sales service provider for South and Eastern parts of the country.
While North and West territories will be looked after by MSI directly as far as
providing warranty and after sales support is concerned.

Apart from entering retail MSI is also planning to make more inroads into B and
C class cities and towns to market its entire range of products, for which the
company will appoint reseller channels.